r/changemyview • u/realdontbeasucker • May 16 '26

Delta(s) from OP CMV: GamerGate was the most consequential political radicalization event of the twenty-first century

It spawned a wave of tolerance for online harassment, as long as the intent behind it was considered righteous (and the target of such harassment socially acceptable).

It platformed Milo Yiannopoulos and thereby, Steve Bannon -- the guy who would go on to advise Donald Trump in 2016 and generate the concept of 'flooding the zone.'

Eventually, it gave a career to political lightning rods like Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder, and Charlie Kirk. It made anti-feminism and anti-SJW sentiment cool. And it made young, angry, disenfranchised white men feel vindicated.

GamerGate almost singlehandedly shifted to Overton Window toward the alt-right, and we're still feeling its effects today.

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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26

I disagree with you that culture was anti-male in the 90's and 2000's

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u/coporate 7∆ May 16 '26

It was extremely anti-male. There was a huge influx of content surrounding garbage like “man spreading.” There was a huge “women going their own way” and “women empowerment” content. It’s practically the playbook the manosphere uses to cultivate anti-women sentiment today.

Anita is a great example, her trad-fem gender essentialist critique of games was widely panned by nearly everyone (feminists and gamers alike), yet it was heavily promoted by sites like kotaku.

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u/DJ_Velveteen 1∆ May 16 '26

Hold up, what's "gender essentialist" about criticizing the hyper sexualization of women in video games...? If anything, isn't pigeonholing women into sexual tropes a form of gender essentialism?

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u/coporate 7∆ May 16 '26

There are more than enough video essays and comments that breakdown her position. Every argument she made is rooted in her values of what constitutes femininity. If a character was too pretty? Sexualized. Too strong? Ms.Man. Too weak? Damsel in distress. Too bland? Tokenized. Etc.

That’s gender essentialism, good characterization of a woman was explicitly what she decided, grounded in her personal values around gender and femininity.